Wholemeal Banana and Raspberry Muffins

I love banana muffins. It's really the only kind of banana I like, but the same old plain banana muffins get boring after a while.

Wholemeal Banana and Raspberry Muffins (cane sugar free, fat free)

Makes 12 regular muffins

Ingredients

2 cups plain wholemeal flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp whole flaxseeds, ground mixed with 3 tbsp water

3/4 cup soy milk

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/2 cup mashed ripe banana (2 small)

1 cup frozen unsweetened raspberries

Method

Lightly grease a muffin pan with margarine or oil. These muffins will probabaly stick to paper liners, and my muffin pan isn't non stick, though if yours is in theory you won't need to grease.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C.

In a small bowl or jug mix together the soy milk and cider vinegar and set aside to curdle.

In a large bowl sift or stir together the flour and baking powder.

In another small bowl mash the banana and stir in the vanilla, flax egg, curdled milk and applesauce.

Gently fold the milk mixture into the flour and stir in the raspberries. Divide evenly among muffin holes and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean :)

These were just sweet enough for me. We are trying to cut out sugar, but if you want a little extra sweetness in your muffins you could add 1/4 - 1/2 cup of sugar. I have to remind myself that just because they are healthy it doesn't mean I can eat them all at once haha. I have a million frozen bananas so I could just make some more..

I was going to post the rye banana muffins I made but I can't find the recipe I wrote down! So I posted these instead.

Also, I finally figured out how to add a tab across the top of my blog page! So now there is an about me section. I figured people read this now so why not. I'm thinking of adding a recipe page too. One day :)

Almond milk

I splurged and bought myself a soy milk maker a little while ago, and let me tell you, it's been getting a workout! And it's certainly very worth it. Through trial an error I've come up with a soy milk recipe we both like, and I can make it for 50c for 1.5L. Awesome. (The recipe is 100g whole organic soy beans, soaked but unskinned, and 2 tbsp unsweetened dessicated coconut by the way. I got the coconut idea from Theresa at the Tropical Vegan.)

Anyway, we were getting over soymilk, well I was because I'd been eating cereal every morning because it's quick to eat before work, and I just happened to have a kilo bag of almonds and I though why not almond milk? I used to make almond milk myself with a blender and lots of patience and it was delicious (and raw) but my patience ran out so I stopped doing that. 

Ignore the cheeki bottle, I'm going to write another post about those later

For my almond milk using the machine (so much easier, funnily enough) I put 100g raw almonds in to soak for at least an hour, put them into the little filter basket, filled the jug up with 1L of water and pressed the appropriate buttons to make the machine NOT* cook it and waited. 

The end result is a lovely sweet tasting creamy almond milk. I still can't get over how these non-dairy milks are all white, by the way.

It's awesome on cereal. Works well in baking.

Makes a pretty good hot cocoa.

And an even better banana-mixed berry-chia seed-smoothie!

I haven't tried it in coffee or tea because I don't drink those beverages with milk! So you'll have to give it a go yourselves.

I can make 1L of raw almond milk, unsweetened, for $1. Cheaper almonds can be found, however, so it could cost less. Do you know how much this stuff costs in the stores? Like $10, no joke. That's why I've never had storebought before! I've got a whole list of expensive-to-buy non-dairy milks to try and make. Quinoa is one of them. Oat milk. A rice milk that tastes good (haven't been too successful yet!) Hemp? Hmm..

Oh! And it's so so so much easier to clean. All I have to do is rinse the filter basket and the blades and give the heating thing a quick wipe. All clean. With cooked soy I have to scrub the damn thing even if I do it striaght away!

*When I made this using my machine for the first time I used the same process as for soy beans, which cooks the milk...it separated and was gross. So raw it is!

'Vegan on the Cheap'

Bought myself a new cookbook because I felt like it! Vegan on the Cheap by Robin Robertson. It's a great book! It's full of heaps of awesome tips about living cheaply but well. It's very handy :)

Tonight was Nadine's turn to cook so she decided to make 'Dan Dan-Style Linguine' on page 124. Basically a spicy peanut and tahini sauce with mixed veg and crumbled tofu on pasta. Delicious :) Very simple and very filling.

Last night was my turn and I chose something with chickpeas because I'd just cooked up a whole heap. I picked Moroccan Chickpeas and Couscous. I had every ingredient I needed except a can of tomatoes and raisins, but they only set me back about $2. I'm pretty sure I'll be making this, often. Very yummy :)

So the book was a good investment I reckon.

I also splurged on a soy milk maker! I am honestly sick of buying carton after carton at the supermarket (we buy at least 4 a week) and then just chucking the damn thing out. As much as we love our Sanitarium So Good Lite, I love the trees the cartons are made from more.

So today I trialled a batch :) I bought 2 glass bottles from the supermarker to store it all in, in the fridge. Mmm...it was OK. It smelled good, which is a good start. It tastes just fine which is also great. It's a little bit watery but that is easily fixed in the next batch.  However it had a bit of pulp in it, which we could get used to but I'd rather just not have it there.

Trial and error! I am very excited to try to make rice milk. I used to buy it when I went off soy milk for a while, but the commercial brand all have SO MUCH sugar in it (and some even seem to have corn syrup) so I refuse to buy it. But if I make my own plain rice milk, it'll be just fine.

The only thing is, our Santiarium stuff was fortified with B12 and calcium - so we're going to have to up the ante on other aspects of our diet to incorporate it. Lots of brocolli, I think. We haven't eaten that for a while. :)